What’s Next for Xbox? ⭐

I spent three hours this past Saturday playing Silent Hill f on a laptop. My wife wasn't feeling well, so we weren't going anywhere, and I was too out of it to get any meaningful work done. Plus, I'm trying once again to expand beyond Call of Duty and play something a little different.

This experience triggered some thinking.

As a game, Silent Hill f is ... whatever. It's fine, I guess. I like horror content as a rule, but it's been a while since a horror game has held my attention. And I'm not sure I can say this game does that. The puzzles and combat sequences are both annoying, and the game is pretty much all puzzles and combat sequences once you get past the plot. Which doesn't seem to tie into previous Silent Hill games in any meaningful way.

But this isn't about any particular game. Instead, my mind drifts to how I acquired this game and where I'm playing it. If Microsoft is able to pull off itss unprecedented attempt to redefine what Xbox is, my experiences with Silent Hill f and other games I've played recently will become the new normal. And Xbox as originally conceived over 25 years ago will be no more.

There is both good and bad in this transition, but in the sense that change is one constant in personal technology, fans should perhaps relax a bit when it comes to their expectations. While many are actively mourning the death of Xbox as a videogame console platform, opening up Xbox to more games, gamers, and devices is inarguably an improvement. But there are some key issues that need to be overcome before we can decide whether the Xbox of the future can be successful.
? How we got here
In What Exactly is Xbox Now? (Premium), I examined what I see as the three core pillars of Xbox: Hardware, software, and subscriptions. Despite my familiarity with Xbox, I was a little surprised by what I found.

Hardware, predictably, is the most problematic because Microsoft never cracked the code on how to make a profitable console. Software is now the crown jewel: Xbox—or Microsoft Games—is now among the biggest game publishers on earth, and this would be a profitable and thriving business if it weren't for hardware. And while Game Pass subscriptions are an open question, it's possible that growth has stalled because of the negative impacts of the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which triggered price increases and the removal of the most popular tier with its day-one access to newly-released games.

Throughout that article and in previous musings, I pulled together Microsoft's public comments about the future of Xbox, examined the other information we've received in leaks and rumors, and made educated guesses about what happens next. But some of these guesses are more educated than others, and there are issues we're just not privy to outside the company, so there could be surprises to come down the road. Here, I am considering a broader range of possibilities. There are some alternative timelines in which Xbox rises...